Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/131

 murders her husband. Another scene represents Lucrezia's toilet; in a third young men come in from tennis and are groomed by a barber. My impression is that in the seventeenth century, instead of discovering a bedchamber in the alcove, it became the custom to secure more space and light by projecting the bed through the central aperture on to the main stage, and removing it by the same avenue when the scene was over. As to this a stage-direction in 2 Henry VI may be significant. There was a scene in 1 Contention in which the murdered body of the Duke of Gloucester is discovered in his bedchamber. This recurs in 2 Henry VI, but instead of a full direction for the drawing of curtains, the Folio has the simple note 'Bed put forth'. This is one of a group of formulas which have been the subject of some discussion. I do not think that either 'Bed put forth' or still less 'Bed thrust out' can be dismissed as a mere equivalent of 'Enter in a bed', which may admittedly cover a parting of the curtains, or of such a warning to the tire-man as 'Bed set out' or 'ready' or 'prepared'. There is a difference between 'setting out' and 'thrusting out', for the one does and the other does not carry the notion of a push. And if 'Bed put forth' is rather more colourless, 'Bed drawn out', which also occurs, is clear enough. Unfortunately the extant text of 2 Henry VI may be of any date up to 1623, and none of the other examples of the formulas in question are direct evidence for the Globe in 1599-1613. To be sure of the projected bed at so earlybeside him' (673) 'She  convaieth away the chaire'. Barbarossa comes into 'this parler here' (700), finds the murdered body, and they 'locke up the dores there' and 'bring in the body' (777), which is therefore evidently not behind a curtain.]*